Two people love drawing. Both use most of their free time engaging in
activities related to this passion. They dream about it; both starve for an
extra chance to put on some work and create. As time passes by, one goes further
and decides to make it his profession: studies techniques at school and
university, devotes entirely to the development of the required skills and ends
up as a well-known artist. On the other hand, the second puts it aside accommodating
his ‘hobby’ between school, his part-time job and taking care of his siblings; he
also pursues tertiary education, but chooses a more common career given the concern
that being an artist would not provide him enough earnings.
When the cause of such contrast proceeds from people facing different
contexts, the doubt about how effective is the society in the provision of opportunities
arises.
This is not an isolated case. It is actually a common situation in less developed
countries, where people are used to put aside their
passions and opt for a more within-the-box occupation that provides them enough
money to survive.
On the other hand, achieving tertiary education in environments
of lower income is already a too-far-to-get objective: countries as Eritrea and
Chad had a gross involvement in tertiary education of only 3% in 2014[1].
In Latin America, the average involvement rate was 45% in the same year. The fact that it is higher
than the world’s average of 34% may seem surprising, but there are some
methodological issues that may explain the differences[2].
Ecuador’s rate is far below this regional average, with levels of approximately
18% in urban areas and less than 7% in rural areas.
To this respect, while lower levels of formal education are not
necessarily a determinant of failure in the labour market, on average, it has
been proved that education is connected to better jobs and higher income, both
being closely related to welfare.
Self-selection,
opportunities and education
Self-selection is conceived as responsible for most of the observed
outcome disparities. The nature and impact of such traits has been highly
explored, especially in sceneries that go from education to the general use of social programs.
But, recalling the initial inquiries: If we had people with similar characteristics
and preferences, why would they achieve uneven outcomes depending on the
environment? Why the odds of being a successful pilot, dancer, singer or, even
worse, attaining any formal profession are different among countries? Those are some of the questions that
development economics has been trying to answer for years. Some argue the
environment implies a certain level of opportunities, and that most
opportunities are related to a person’s experiences and education. Therefore,
we get back to where we started.
That’s why governments,
private initiatives, ONGs and international organisations make huge efforts to
provide education access. They have been successful in addressing some of the
most serious barriers to access primary, secondary and tertiary education.
However, the impact in terms of educational outcomes, and in particular student
learning, has been much less impressive. A recent publication by the WB
analysed the impact of their programs supporting education in developing
countries. It found significant weaknesses in student learning, measured by the
change in performance. One of the most relevant examples is Peru, with only 8% of sixth
graders reaching mastery levels in language and 7% in maths. A parallel study cites
that, even though they were supposed to, “75% of the first graders could not read at all by the end of the school year”
(Crouch, et. al., 2005). And more generally, some findings coincide in that children at schools
outside the government systems achieve, on average, higher learning outcomes
with equal or less resources.
Aiming to uncover the reasons behind that, the Public Expenditure
Tracking Survey (PETS) reveals how much government funding actually reaches the
classroom by identifying the main points of resource leakage. In some cases, it
goes even further to evaluate characteristics of service delivery.
Among the most enlightening detections, higher government spending on
education in Zambia had no effect on outcomes because parents counteracted it
by reducing their spending in an equivalent amount. In Peru, the survey offered
some insight on the complexities behind the distribution of funds from central
government down to classrooms due to excessive bureaucracy. It was also the
country with the lowest impact since there were frequent changes of authorities; such instability of institutions undermined
ownership of the results and diminished incentives to change policies.
Another WB study examines the relationship between individuals’ skills
and labour market outcomes for the working-age population in Colombian urban
areas[3].
The main source is the Skills toward Employment and Productivity (STEP, 2012) household
survey[4],
which focuses on two main categories of personal skills: cognitive,
understood as aptitudes to perform mental tasks such as comprehension or
reasoning, and socio-emotional, that refer to personality traits and
behaviours. The results showed that although both matter for pursuing tertiary
education and getting favourable labour market outcomes, their roles differ. Cognitive
skills were proved to be greatly associated with higher earnings, job formality
or high-qualified occupations, while the second played a stronger role in terms
of labour market participation.
Ecuador:
Outside Vs. inside the classrooms
The statistics related to education attainment and access to scholarships
for education in Ecuador during the last decade is remarkable. To begin with,
education became free of charge up to the tertiary level, providing potential
accessibility for all. Besides, figures from the WBD suggest that the country
increased the average years of education in 1.3 between 2000 and 2015, and that
such attainment was evenly distributed among all income quintiles.
In terms of educational programs, an important initiative is the
scholarships program for higher studies in internationally recognised
institutions all over the world with a register of 11.501 scholarships granted
between 2007 and 2015 according to the National Secretary of Education, Science,
Innovation and Technology (SENESCYT). There have also been projects involving
the participation of foreign institutions and experts that allow for an
important exchange of culture, knowledge and experiences, especially valuable
in the labour market.
Nevertheless, as numbers hardly provide the whole scenario, I was curious
about how much we had improved in terms of thinking outside the box while
choosing professions. I still wanted to scratch and look under the numbers of
new enrolled in higher education and granted scholarships.
Therefore, I started asking students, family and friends that have being
part of the process about their experiences. Some of the questions include: “If you could choose anywhere to live, where
would you go?” “If you could do anything you want for a living, what would you
choose?” If you were given a wish to change your life, what would you ask for?”
Clearly, the process was all but formal or well-designed so numbers loose
importance. However, capturing how far it seems to people the achievement of
their passions offers some insight on the situation. People thinking that
emigrating would be their ticket to happiness; others studying business because
that career was the only option with space left or, even worse, forgetting about
their life plan in order to afford a living… it tells us that there is still
much to be done.
What
is next?
The trends exhibited in the Education Policy And Data Centre (EPDC)
policy brief show that achieving the last 10% of educational coverage could
take even longer than achieving the first of 90%. Also, those included in the
remaining part generally involve people in rural areas, in generally excluded
states or provinces, female, and the poor. This pattern is a call for attention
as it suggests that policies in developing countries present systematic
failures, which we have not complied with yet.
New approaches are needed if we are about to give access to education and
other relevant opportunities to the ‘remaining’ part of the population. New
indicators must be included when evaluating the performance of social policy in
terms of education. Growing figures of coverage are to be celebrated with no
doubt, but quality of education and its actual impact on the population is
still far to be achieved. Awareness of this limitation and our taking part with
this responsibility would be a wise way to re-direct the journey.
The article has no conclusions as it consists of an invitation for
readers to contribute, from their experience and perspective. Do you agree with
the approach taken to improve education in Ecuador? What has been your
experience about the taken measures? What else could be done in order to build
more reliable instruments to assess it? What should the public policy intend to
drive in order to provide education with real use and impact? Your contribution
matters, leave us a comment!
[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR?year_high_desc=false
[2] First, this average is upwards biased since there is no information for
31 out of 44 countries considered in the region by the World Bank (WB), and the
ones that present information are usually those with better results. Second,
compared to the average for Europe and Central Asia (65%), while the highest
values are similar, the averages differ by 20% as a result of the greater
dispersion.
[3] Acosta et.al., 2015